COMMUNITY LIVING.

Make the choice, but hear their voice

August 10, 2001|By Pamela Dittmer McKuen. Special to the Tribune.

Some community association boards permit so much audience participation during their meetings that it's hard to tell who is in charge. Others operate under the philosophy that unit owners are meant to be seen but not heard.

The Illinois Condominium Property Act makes no provision for unit owners who are not board members to speak at regular business meetings, although they may attend and, within certain guidelines, record the goings on.

Most industry insiders agree that even though non-board unit owners may not have the right to express themselves, prudent boards will set aside some time to listen to their comments, suggestions, complaints and questions. This time is often referred to as open forum.

"Any sort of communication is valuable to the association," said Lou Lutz, president of Sudler and Co., a Chicago-based property management company. "Open forums, as long as they are run in an orderly fashion, allow unit owners to talk directly to the board and gives the board an opportunity to listen. Board members all ran [for office] voluntarily and ran to represent the unit owners. I don't know how they represent people unless they listen to them."

"Having no open forum can drive a political wedge between the board and unit owners that needn't be done," said attorney Chuck VanderVennet of Fosco VanderVennet & Fullet in Mt. Prospect. "I think you should have a forum of some sort, but it has to be controlled."

An open forum can follow a variety of formats but is usually held either before or after the board meeting. There are pros and cons to each. If you opt for doing it early, unit owners can have their questions answered and leave instead of sitting through a lengthy meeting. If you do it later, you might answer their questions during the course of the meeting. Most open forums last between 15 and 30 minutes.

Mike Baum, president of Baum Property Services in Aurora, likes to give each speaker a certain number of minutes rather than setting a time limit on the open forum. "If you have 20 people who want to talk, half an hour isn't enough," he said. "If you have one, it's too long."

One of the three Orchard Glen associations in Glenview recently decided to request that unit owners put their questions in writing before the meeting. "For maybe 15 years, our open forum has been sort of a family-style conversation," said president John Petersen. "But lately people have been asking questions that are fairly complicated. So often we were saying we don't know or we have to look into that. We thought maybe we ought to get some of these questions in advance. So far it's worked beautifully . . . ."

Written correspondence doesn't eliminate comments and short-answer questions from the floor, he added.

"Another approach is when you know nine people are there to talk about the balcony painting project is to have a separate discussion when you get to it in the agenda," said VanderVennet.

You can also set periodic gatherings, unrelated to board meetings, that are entirely devoted to unit owner input, he added. Few boards encourage owners to chime in whenever they are so moved during the meetings, although there are exceptions.

"We remind people that this is a meeting of the board and we have to get through the agenda, so please honor that," said Petersen. "However, there are times we ask people to participate, particularly if we know someone has some information or if we want some kind of straw poll to gauge reaction to something on the agenda."

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Do you have an issue you'd like to see discussed in a future column? You can write to Pamela Dittmer McKuen in care of Community Living, Chicago Tribune, Your Place section, 435 N. Michigan Ave., 4th Floor, Chicago, IL 60611. Please include your phone number. Or e-mail PMckuen@aol.com.